Why hello there and welcome to Real Fast Results. In this podcast, we’re going to talk about how to build your list with your digital publications. Now, just for a moment, I want you to imagine yourself on a beautiful beach. There are swaying palm trees, a light breeze, you can hear the ocean and the waves lapping on the shore. You’re in a chase lounge maybe sipping on your favorite libation. As you do that, you have this feeling of satisfaction, of security.

The reason why you feel secure is you know that everyday, through the mechanisms that you have out working in the business world, that you have new leads and new sales coming into your business. This makes it possible that every once in a while you can take off at will and without asking anyone’s permission and go to the beach or take a vacation. That is what is possible for you if, if, if, if you will number one, put more digital publications out into the world. Number two, parley or leverage those digital publications such that they will actually bring new people to you. They will help you establish brand new relationships.

How to Auto Build Your List With Digital Publications

We’re going to chat about how you can auto build your list with your digital publications. I’m pretty excited about this. This is the stuff that really can triple charge your business. Let’s jump into it right now. Let me tell you the number one reason why you want to publish digitally on platforms like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Apple Bookstore, Audible, Google Books. The number one reason why you do this is not for the royalties.

It is not for royalty income. It’s the opportunity to connect with your ideal customer and build a rapport with them, build the connection, build a bond with them. You do this through what you say in your content. You allow them to evaluate how you approach problems. In this way, they resonate with how you do things. They say to themselves, “Wow! This person knows their stuff and I can see what they’re saying actually working for me in my life.”

The cool thing about this, going back to our beautiful beach, is your readers make this determination. They have this realization without you. You don’t have to actually be there. Your content, your eBook, your Kindle Book, your audiobook, is actually your proxy. That’s one of the reasons why I like to say that these publications are like bees in your hive of prosperity. When the publications are done, they can take on a life of their own and you never know where they might end up.

We are taking the next step in leveraging these digital assets. This process starts in your book or wherever you’re published. In other words the process of people beginning to know you, beginning to like you, beginning to resonate with you. This all begins in your book. It matures and grows with additional contact with you. That contact is usually via email or text.

Include a Free Offer

You have a moral imperative if you’re publishing anything, you should always include a free related offer. You want to invite people off of whatever platform they happen to be on, say it’s Amazon or Audible, invite them off those platforms and onto your list and into your world. Super important that you understand that.

This paradigm, help you to better understand this concept. There is a party going on at Amazon for example. Just like a party where you go meet new people. You like these new people you are meeting. You might think, “Hey! This is a really nice person. I’d like to get to know this person better.” That person would like to get to know you better as well. These are opportunities. Amazon is an opportunity. The iBookstore. Audible. Google Books. Anywhere where people are essentially gathered. Anywhere where there are eyeballs is a party. At a party, you need to get a person’s telephone number to deepen that relationship. In the digital world, you need to get their email address to deepen that relationship.

How to Make a Free Offer

I want you to make a free offer in your digital books, or at least consider it. You do this by giving something away that the other person wants. In other words, somebody picks up your book, buys your book or listens to your book. By having purchased your book they get to know you. They might think, “Oh wow. This person has some really great stuff. Immediately usable content that applies to me in my life,” and then you go one step further. You make it super easy for them to take that next step with you by offering them something free. Something that is of value to them.

Example

Here’s an example. Let’s say that you have a book or an eBook. You may want to then offer some sort of free audiobook or video. For example, recently my son had the assignment to read “The Taming of the Shrew.” He’s in eighth grade. He was to read this great Shakespearean work. So, I said, “Okay. Well, let’s go buy a Kindle version of the book and also an audiobook version of the book.” When I went to look for the books to buy for this assignment, I noticed that there was a Kindle version that also had a free audiobook version.

What do you think I did? I bought the book that offered the free audio version. When we went to download the book in order to get the audiobook version, I had to give my name and email address through the Kindle book. It absolutely works. I’ve gotten several emails from the author or the publisher of this Shakespearean work, “Taming of the Shrew,” and all is well. Send people to an offer that has audiobooks, eBooks or even prints on demand books.

Another idea is to have a free membership site where people register for the free membership. Then they are in your system. They’re a part of your community. That basically opens the door for you to continue to build a relationship with them.

Here are some important points to remember when making a free offer:

Whatever you’re offering should be really sexy.

Have a really hot title. Something that screams some sort of benefit for the person.

Be consistent with your content. In other words, you can’t have a product on tomato growing and then offer some sort of way to grow African violets. It just doesn’t mesh.

Whatever you’re giving away for free, make sure that the people reading the underlying material want it.

Make quality offers.

Whatever you’re giving away must be good enough for you to sell. You should not even blink an eye if you were to sell it. Your free offer has to be that good of quality.

Don’t think freebie. Don’t think giveaway. Think of some of your best material in the giveaway.

Where to Make a Free Offer

Now, the other thing I want to talk about how and where to make these offers. I know some of you are saying, “Well Daniel, how do I do this? You’ve sold me on the idea of doing it. Well, how do I do it?” Here is how you do it. First, remember that your offer must make sense for the publication. For example, let’s pretend that this podcast was an audiobook. Say an audiobook on writing or authorship. If that were the case, and we’re not too far off with this particular podcast, I might say something like, “Hey! My free seven day ‘How to Publish a Print on Demand Book’ course is available at danielhallpresents.com/realbookcourse.”

It fits with the topic; fits with the overall topic of writing and authorship and not coincidentally this particular series that we’re doing within Real Fast Results on digital publishing. Funny how that happens. That’s how to make the offer. At a minimum, you need to mention the offer at the beginning and at the end.

Let’s say you’re in an eBook. You’d have a page, just one page, devoted to your free offer. Whatever that offer happens to be. You need to have the free offer at the end of the book as well. If you want to go super conservative, just have it at the end. If it’s good content, and again the underlying offer that you’re giving away for free should be good stuff, then you should not feel bad about making the offer twice. If at all possible put the free offer in the middle as well. Just like I did my free print on demand course. I wove it into the content.

This is another super important point: don’t be salesy or pushy. Mention it and that’s it. If your content is good, and if it is truly helpful for the market that you’re trying to reach, then you don’t have to be salesy or pushy because your content sells for you. The proof of the pie is in the eating of it. The beautiful thing is that when your underlying content is good and helpful, then people will be predisposed to reading or listening to your material. They will be predisposed to your approach and they’ll want to connect with you.

What You Need to Make Your Free Offer

Website

Where do you send people for the free offer? Well, usually to an opt-in form somewhere on your blog or a website. I will say here that your website should be mobile responsive. WordPress is a good place to start for a website. For those of you that don’t know, WordPress is a free content management software that you can install for free on your own domain. You can have a theme put on that or you could put on your own theme. There are a lot of free WordPress Themes to choose from. I will say here that your website should be mobile responsive. In other words, you can easily read your site on a mobile service, iPad or a Kindle device or a phone, for example smartphone. You definitely need that.

Autoresponder

The other thing you’re going to need is an autoresponder. I recommend either AWeber, which is currently about $19 a month for their lowest end package, or MailChimp which is free up to your first 2,000 subscribers. I know some of you are saying, “Well, if MailChimp is free, why on earth would I start off paying AWeber $19 a month?” The reason is that MailChimp, although it’s a really good service, tends to have more restrictions on what you could send to the people on your list.

For example, it’s not easy to send affiliate offers there, and they are pickier about what they allow you to send. I don’t like that. I like to call the shots on what I send to you all. AWeber also has excellent deliver-ability. I don’t have those sorts of problems with AWeber. Those are the 2 services that I recommend for beginners.

Get Your Readers Name and Email Address

Whenever you send people to your free offer, send them to a page that has one thing. Just your offer and information related to your offer. Using the danielhallpresents.com/realbookcourse again, this is an example of what we call a squeeze page or a name squeeze page. It’s meant to squeeze the name and email address out of a visitor. That’s how it got its name. If you are sending someone from your publication to your website, send them to a page where that offer is available and that’s the only thing that’s there. Their only choice is to either opt-in or leave. If you send them to a blog that also has an opt-in form, it’s much less likely that they’ll actually opt-in. They will get distracted reading something else on your blog instead of opting in to your free offer.

You might be sending them to your “About Me” page or something else. Where ever you may be sending them, you want people to subscribe. You want people to get on your list, and once they’re on your list, you can send them to blog posts and podcasts and wherever you would like at that point. Job one is to get their name and email address. They you can begin to reach out to them and build a relationship with them and serve them, give them value and hopefully a sense of community.

Bonus Strategy for Kindle Books

I want to give you an additional bonus strategy here. This relates to Kindle books and any type of eBook. That is Kindle, NOOK Books, (books that are being sold on the Barnes and Noble Bookstore), books in the iBookstore, Google Books. Any eBook. Remember that all eBooks are basically self-contained websites. Which means a website that you could easily set up so is some part of your book that is easily shared via social media. This is what makes this particular strategy particularly viral and this is a very cool thing.

Example

Let me give you an example here. Let’s say that you have some sort of key quote that sums up part of your content, and does so really well. You could use a free tool that I’m about to share with you that will make that quote link to your Amazon page or your book on Amazon. Or even a website; super easy to share. The idea here is that you set up your book so that people can click right from your eBook or Kindle Book and be taken to a social media sharing site to share some part of your book with a link back to the book, or to wherever you want to send them. Now, this is again fairly easy to do and I want to tell you about this completely free tool. It’s actually called the Donordigital Share Code Generator.

If you want to see it in action, go to danielhallpresents.com/realbookcourse and you’ll start getting emails. One email from me a day for seven to 9 days with step by step training on how to put together your print on demand books. On the bottom of everyone of those emails is a way that you can share that course on both Twitter and on Facebook. The code that I used to do that I made from Donordigital.

Daniel’s Real Fast Results Tips: List Building

Make sure the free offer relates to the content in your digital publication.

Don’t be afraid to post the free offer at least two times in your digital publication.

Related

Daniel Hall is a bestselling author, speaker, publisher, nurse, attorney and host the Real Fast Results podcast. He is also the creator of other highly popular “Real Fast” brand of training products. He left law practice 10 years ago to build his publishing business and has never looked back. Daniel is a true serial entrepreneur and his list of URLs is longer than a piece of paper, so you can check out Daniel’s hub at www.DanielHallPresents.com or the podcast right here on this site!